


vii. i've got you

by tempestaurora



Series: the kids aren't alright [whumptober 2020] [7]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Break Up Talk, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Heart-to-Heart, Post-Season/Series 02, Sibling Bonding, They Ended Up In The Right Timeline And Everything's Okay, Whumptober
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-07
Updated: 2020-10-07
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:55:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26877037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tempestaurora/pseuds/tempestaurora
Summary: “Five,” Allison said in a sing-song voice. "Are you alright?"He felt her lean over and take the bottle from his hand. Five rolled his face to the side, cheek against the cool counter top, and sighed heavily.“No,” he said.She hummed. “Is this apocalypse related?”“Apocalypse-adjacent.”“What’s on your mind?” she asked, her hand rubbing at that patch between his shoulder blades.“Delores,” he admitted.OR: After the events of Season 2, the siblings are back in the right timeline and nothing else is going wrong. But without the apocalypse to think about, Five has plenty of time to mourn his relationship with Delores.
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy & Allison Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy & The Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy/Delores
Series: the kids aren't alright [whumptober 2020] [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1930186
Comments: 27
Kudos: 218





	vii. i've got you

**Author's Note:**

> Prompts: Support | Carrying
> 
> honestly this shit is just CUTE ok

Five missed Delores.

He missed the way she used to relax in the shade or lounge in the sun. Missed the way she talked as he pedalled his bike, dragging her along in the cart behind his wheels. Missed the way she always knew what to say, always knew what he _needed,_ always knew when needs were more important than wants.

They were together forty years, and he’d returned to 2019 without her. What must she have thought? He’d left her in his room at the Commission, said he’d be back after his trip to 1963 to assure the assassination of President Kennedy and then—

Then he never came back.

She must hate him. She must despise him.

The Delores he found a few weeks ago, and eventually returned, was not _really_ his Delores, and they both knew it. She was young and new, hadn’t yet experienced forty years of apocalypse and fear; she didn’t know their inside jokes, their love. Five had been forcing it, he supposed; he just missed her so much that he thought any version of her would do, when clearly it wouldn’t. Returning her to the department store was what was best for the both of them.

And yet, now he was lonely.

The apocalypses had all been averted, it was mid-April, 2019, and they were in the right timeline, everyone alive, and yet he was _lonely._ Five was approximately fifty-eight years old – he counted sixteen-thousand-two-hundred-and-nine days in the apocalypse, though surely he missed a few – and now he was on his own.

He was strangely jealous of the others, in that way. Because they, too, were all alone; Diego’s erratic girlfriend Lila had vanished into time with a briefcase and not returned; Luther and Allison were doing that weird thing where they _looked_ but didn’t touch or even communicate about whatever the hell it was they had going on; Klaus’ Vietnam lover was long dead; Vanya’s farm girlfriend was left in the sixties and, well, Ben was gone. They were all alone, and yet none of them could truly the fathom the depths of Five’s despair.

He thunked his head down on the bar, a glass of scotch held loosely in one hand, the bottle in the other.

“He’s doing that thing again,” Klaus said from somewhere behind him.

Diego grunted. “That thing where he creeps us out by getting wasted in a thirteen-year-old’s body, or that thing where he’s generally unbearable?”

“The first one.”

Five sighed into the countertop. The bar had been off limits his entire childhood, but now Dad was dead, they’d all taken to raiding it whenever possible. Dad had a _lot_ of high-quality alcohol hidden back there.

“ _Five,_ ” Allison said in a sing-song voice. He felt her hand on his back through his blazer, rubbing between his shoulder blades. He refused to admit to himself that he liked the touch, that he’d missed affection and intimacy when Delores had only one arm to speak of and she rarely used it to rub his back or make him feel better. (She liked holding hands and dancing, but she never did much to initiate contact between them.) “Are you alright?”

He felt her lean over and take the bottle from his hand. Five rolled his face to the side, cheek against the cool counter top, and sighed heavily.

“No,” he said.

She hummed. “Is this apocalypse related?”

“Apocalypse-adjacent.”

“Are you drunk?”

“Only a little.”

Allison’s smile was soft and pretty. She’d grown up to be one of those famous actresses everyone wanted to know and meet. He’d spent an afternoon Googling her while she was back in L.A. visiting her daughter and ex-husband; he’d seen the magazine covers and modelling shoots, the red carpet looks and ad campaigns for moisturisers. I guess they’d always known she would grow up to be the prettiest.

Five tried to decide if she could understand his pain, because she was divorced and currently separated from her daughter, but decided she couldn’t because that life didn’t contain the trauma of being the last human left alive. It still probably sucked though.

“What’s on your mind?” she asked, her hand still rubbing that patch between his shoulder blades.

“Delores,” he admitted.

Allison glanced over her shoulder at their brothers.

“Apocalypse girlfriend,” someone supplied; sounded like Luther. Were they _all_ in here? Five would’ve thought that after saving the world and spending so much time together they’d all go off and do their own things for a while.

Allison nodded and lifted her hand up to brush at his hair, sweeping it away from his forehead with gentle fingers.

“You miss her?”

“A lot.”

“Did she… pass away, or…?”

He shook his head with a sigh. “We split up,” he said. She was back at the Commission, but he couldn’t fetch her now. He couldn’t go back and bring her to 2019 – she was a product of the apocalypse just like him. Neither of them fit right in the real world. “I found her—her younger counterpart in the present, but it just wasn’t the same.”

“I’ll bet,” Allison sighed. “You’ll be two different people now.”

“Exactly.” Five grunted and sat up, taking a sip of his scotch and pulling a face when Allison dropped her hand. He watched it fall and shot her a quick look, and she replaced it at the back of his neck, gently massaging at the spot between his nape and his shoulder.

“Can we do anything to help?”

He looked past Allison to his other siblings, lounged about across the couches and only half-heartedly pretending that they weren’t listening in.

“You can let me get drunk,” he sighed, downing the rest of the scotch in his glass.

“Oh, come on, Five,” Luther said from across the room. “Isn’t there anything else we could do?”

“We could paint your nails,” Klaus said, swinging around on the cushions to look at him properly. “That always makes me feel better.”

“No, thanks,” Five replied.

“Or drugs. Drugs work, too.”

“No drugs,” Diego said, firm. “I don’t wanna be the one who has to explain to child protective services why Five technically _isn’t_ a child and therefore is _kind of_ allowed to smoke weed.”

“Kind of allowed?” Five asked.

Diego shrugged, waving a vague hand. “I forget which states legalised it.”

“I don’t wanna get high, anyway,” Five informed him. “I want to drink my way through this three-hundred dollar bottle of scotch and mope.”

Vanya kicked her feet up onto the table. “I don’t remember you being this depressing as a kid.”

He hummed. “The apocalypse is incredibly traumatising.”

“I can recommend you a good therapist,” she replied. “Now, why don’t we watch a movie?”

Five pulled a face. “Can I drink?”

Vanya hesitated. “Half the bottle. Not all of it.”

“Deal.”

“Oh!” Klaus jumped up. “I’ll get the blankets. Diego, there’s a million packets of popcorn in the pantry – there was this _excellent_ bulk buy discount so I bought a year’s worth – and Luther—” he cut off as he watched Five try to stand and immediately tip into Allison’s side. Admittedly, he’d been drinking steadily for well over an hour before his siblings found him, and despite his consciousness having a good tolerance for alcohol, his thirteen-year-old body was a fucking _lightweight._

“Luther,” Klaus repeated, “you’re gonna carry Five.”

“I don’t need to be carried. I’m not even slurring my words. I’m fine.”

Allison laughed and took a big step back. Five immediately tilted into the place she’d been and stumbled, falling into Allison’s arms as she darted back to catch him.

“Yeah,” she said, grinning. “He’s _fine._ ”

He glared at her and Luther smiled that annoying _I’m a big brother_ kind of smile, that wasn’t technically true as Five was the oldest of them all, as he heaved out of his seat.

“Don’t worry, Five,” he said, patting Five’s shoulder with his huge hand. “I’ve got you.” Five went limp and let Luther swing him into his arms in a bridal carry. He huffed and dropped his head backwards so he could look at Allison upside-down.

“You should’ve left me to drink,” he told her.

“I’m already fighting one custody battle for a child,” she said, prim, “I’m not in the mood to fight a second.”

He pointed a lazy finger at her as Luther started into the other room, Allison following behind.

“You’re _not_ getting custody of me.”

“You’re a baby,” she replied. “Someone needs to.”

Five didn’t have the effort to protest, so he settled for glaring and letting Luther carry him over to the comfier sofa, and plonk him down right as Klaus appeared with a bundle of blankets.

“I’m requesting a movie without a happy ending so I can wallow,” Five said, right before grunting under the weight of the blankets all landing on him at once. Allison flopped down beside him, and Klaus took the other side, grinning.

“No can do, baby brother,” he said. “We’re gonna watch one of them Lifetime movies about true love or something.”

“Nah,” Diego interrupted, returning with three bowls of popcorn stacked in his arms. “We can’t do that to him. He’s thirteen. Do you wanna watch _Toy Story?_ ”

“I’ve seen _Toy Story,_ ” Five spat. They’d watched only a handful of movies in their youth, and two of them had been _Toy Story_ and _Toy Story 2._ “We went to the premiere of the sequel, remember?” Vanya pulled a face, because she had not, in fact, been invited to the premiere of the _Toy Story_ sequel in 1999, mere months after The Umbrella Academy rocketed to fame. Five considered apologising, but he figured that if they apologised for everything that happened in their childhoods, they would be here all day.

“So, _Toy Story 3,_ ” Allison said, cutting the rising tension like a knife. “That was 2010, I think. Have you seen that one?”

Five pulled a face. “No?”

She waved a hand. “You’re gonna love it. Plenty of depressing moments interspersed with light-hearted comedic hijinks perfect for a child of your age.”

Five glowered, Allison grinned, Vanya put on the movie.

He wallowed, and drank, and ate popcorn under a mountain of blankets, and Allison curled her arm around his shoulders and let him lean on her when he got tired and a little invested in the story. She carded her fingers gently through his hair, and as the toys all faced death in the incinerator, whispered, “We’ve got you, Five,” so quiet that he was surely the only one who heard.

Five may have been sixty, but he couldn’t help it when he relaxed against her, swiping away the single tear he’d reluctantly shed for the toys before their miraculous rescue.

He didn’t have Delores anymore, and it was likely that he would never have her again. But he had his family, and as that had always been the dream, it was more than good enough.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!!! 
> 
> as i read this fic for the last time before posting, i couldn't help but think about CPS not believing that five's actually a sixty-year-old inside a tiny body and therefore allison having to get custody, and at first she considers just telling the world that she's adopted a kid when the media asks, but then she straight up says, 'that's number 5. he fucked with time travel and is actually 60 but he's legally a 13 year old so i guess he's my son now"
> 
> please talk to me in the comments! 
> 
> tomorrow: someone is dead, someone else can see ghosts, and also the beginning of a new mini series i have failed to name in advance


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